A Game of Mixtapes
by Emmy Smokes
Summary: Modern AU. Ongoing series of related drabbles and one-shots. Rhaegar/Lyanna - Brandon/Cat & Ned/Cat - Cersei/Jaime and MOAR to come
1. Track 01 - A song for Lyanna

**A Game of Mixtapes**

by Emmy Smokes

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Notes- This is the start of a series set in the same verse as _asking for grace and forgiveness_.

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**Track 01 – ****_A song for Lyanna_**** by Rhaegar Targaryen**

Lyanna is sixteen, clever, beautiful, and fascinating.

He is ten years her senior, married, and her teacher.

They meet the same way he meets all of his students—in a classroom filled with people whose faces neither he nor them will remember in five years. He doesn't take notice of her, not even when she hands him her first essay, a piece with some rather colorful commentary on Amadeus Mozart's sex life. He even reads the essay to his estranged wife, who almost laughs. "What is a girl so imaginative doing in your class?" she asks.

Rhaegar doesn't even know her name until her father comes into his study one day. He's about to finish a new sonata and would rather not be interrupted, but his secretary insists.

As soon as the man comes in, Rhaegar can tell he's about to ask him something he won't be able to refuse. He has that air about him—the air of someone who's constantly in command, someone who's used to getting what he wants. So Rhaegar puts away his papers, pours them both some brandy, and braces himself for whatever's coming.

"It's my daughter Lyanna," Rickard Stark says after the proper introductions have been made. "She's in your class, and she's not doing very well, you see."

Rhaegar's thoughts go to that classroom, those faces, those names. He finds Lyanna's name in blue ink, and he sees the essay and the daring words, "By Lyanna Stark, your ever faithful student."

"Ah, yes, Lyanna Stark." He fears he knows where this conversation is headed. Over the years he's had many parents come over to complain about their children's grades, throwing such fits they would put their own children to shame. "I'm afraid I—"

"I know she's terrible at Music," Lyanna's father says bluntly. "I need neither your excuses nor hers, Mr. Targaryen. All I ask is that you consider the possibility of giving her private lessons."

Rhaegar almost chokes on his drink. For the first time in his life, he's at a loss for words.

"Mr. Stark," he says finally, "that isn't a part of my job. If you're so interested in her grades, I suggest you find a private teacher, someone who specializes in—"

"I can't. She says it must be you."

The expression on Lyanna's father's face is nothing like the ones Rhaegar often finds on his own father. Rickard Stark loves his daughter, and it is clear that _she_ is the one thing in his life he cannot control.

Rhaegar is intrigued, so he agrees.

The first time she walks into the music room, chewing gum, her tie crooked and her hair uncombed, Rhaegar thinks she must have made a mistake. Surely she can't go to this school. Surely nobody on Earth would allow her to get away with her... her everything.

Then she walks up to him and reaches out a small, feathery hand. "Hi. I'm Lyanna Stark."

She smiles, and he is doomed.

He can't keep his eyes from following her lily fingers as they trace the bold, boyish notes she's scrawled on her notebook. The corners of her lips seem to curl when she reads them out loud: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si.

She's a terrible musician, but Rhaegar doesn't mind. He enjoys challenges. And teaching her proves to be quite the challenge.

"I don't fancy that old stuff," she tells him, pouting. "I wanna play something by _The Brotherhood Without Banners_, or some _Hear Me Roar!_. None of these dusty 'classics' of yours."

Rhaegar doesn't understand. He married a singer. He'd always known he'd end up with a wonderful woman who shared his tastes in music, a woman who understood his need for solitude, a woman who was wise—a woman, in any case, but not a child. Yet here he is, in love with a sixteen year old who talks about contemporary music and butchers all of his favorite songs.

That day he sits close to her on the bench so that he can correct her. She stares at him with burning eyes and tells him he's "playing it wrong. It's not supposed to be delicate and slow, you're not taking a girl's virginity, you dolt. You're supposed to play it like it was meant to be played."

"And how is that?"

"Like—like—like a rock song, you know. All raw and sexy and fast and... and _alive_."

He feels compelled to tell her that classical music can hardly be described as sexy, but one look at her and that piano—his only true, authentic passions on this Earth—convinces him that he is wrong. He's been wrong all his life, he realizes suddenly.

"Can I play a song for you, then?"

"It's a free country," she smiles, leaving her seat on the bench to stand behind it. "What are you playing?"

_Your song_, he thinks.

"Well, teacher?"

"Listen, student."

And so it begins. It starts off as a whisper—the words he wishes he could tell her, the soft kisses he would leave on her skin if he could, the way he'd caress her if he dared—and grows into a mournful crescendo—his broken marriage, his lust for her, his father and his mother fighting, his siblings' cries and pleas—until it's over with one single, sorrowful note, quiet as a tear.

When he's finished, she's turned her back to him.

"Let me guess—too 'dead' for your liking," he teases her.

"No—it's—it's beautiful, Rhaegar."

She's never said his name out loud before. He's always been Mr. Targaryen to her.

To him, however, she's always been Lyanna.


	2. Track 02 - Lady Stoneheart

**A Game of Mixtapes**

by Emmy Smokes

**Track 02 – ****_Lady Stoneheart_**** by The Brotherhood Without Banners**

Catelyn Tully goes to an all-girls' Catholic school. It's the same school her mother attended, and her mother before her, and so on and so forth until such things as private schools for Catholic girls have existed.

To her classmates' delight and to her own supreme annoyance, Brandon Stark has aquired a god-like status akin to that of The Brotherhood Without Banners here in her school. He's here often, to pick up his latest girlfriend or just to check out the girls in their uniforms. He has a bike and his friends are all handsome, and the simple fact that they're from the North side of town and not Catholics makes their presence there all the more alluring.

Catelyn herself does not find it amusing at all. The way he and his friends stare at them, how they follow their bare legs with hungry eyes as they walk, how they look at them as if they're something to be devoured. She hates all of them.

And, much like it happens in all those romantic comedies her sister loves to watch—and that Catelyn would never admit to delighting in as well—the one girl who is not interested in the guy becomes the sole object of Brandon Stark's affections.

Much to her displeasure, she might add.

Whenever she leaves school with her sister and her friends, she finds him there, with his bike and his tattoos and his sunglasses and his expensive clothes. She always looks the other way, and he always makes a point of following her slowly on his bike. At that point her friends desert her, and it's almost as if she's walking side by side with Brandon Stark.

"I know what you're after," she warns him. "And I'm not interested, so you can stop wasting your time."

Brandon Stark only laughs at her. His laugh is loud and disconcerting, the sort of laugh that would make a man jump and look around him to see what's going on. But Catelyn is not a man, so she is not impressed.

"Of course. Because you're one of the good ones, aren't you? With your Bible and your jumpers and your ties and all that crap—oh, I'm sorry, all that _garbage_. Or would you prefer if I said trash?"

He's mocking her. Catelyn would be hurt, but she's not the type to let words pierce her armor. She prefers to pick up the sword and pierce theirs instead.

"Your sister goes here, doesn't she?" she says casually.

"No." And by his tone Catelyn knows her blow has hit home. She thinks perhaps she's gone too far even for the likes of Brandon Stark until he adds, "We're not fucking Catholics."

She expects him to turn away and go choose another girl to pick on, but still he keeps up with her fast steps. "No," he repeats, his voice no longer confident. "She used to go to a very similar school, though. Very strict. Very handsome teachers, I hear."

She slows down and says thoughtfully, "Very handsome children go to this school."

She's not stupid. She'd often seen Mr. Targaryen come pick up his daughter. She's but a babe, a little girl, as delicate and pretty as her father. Then one day he stopped coming, and the rumours started. By the next week, the truth was all over town.

"I'm not after his fucking children—er, sorry—I'm just... I'm just trying to find her."

"And flirt with girls," Catelyn points out helpfully.

He laughs again. Catelyn keeps her eyes on the road ahead, on her feet, on her schoolbag, on the distant forest.

"Oh, don't be jealous, my love, you are the only one for me."

"You are the last man on God's Earth I'd ever consider dating, Brandon Stark."

"Your loss."

And it is.

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"I've heard something you might be interested in," she tells him one day.

She actually heard it a long time ago, shortly after they started going on these frequent sort-of-walks, but she's also known something else for quite a while: she likes Brandon Stark. She likes him a lot, actually. And these two completely unrelated truths are what's keeping her from even hinting at any one of them.

Therefore it is with great sorrow that she tells him, "I know where she is."

After that, he is forever lost to her.

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She meets his brother on the day of the burial. Her first thought is that he looks nothing like Brandon, this Eddard Stark. There is nothing in his face that indicates bravery or daring, but then again, he _is_ in mourning.

She shakes his and his brother's hand and says she's sorry before she leaves.

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They meet again at his father's burial. Catelyn knows she shouldn't be there, but still she goes. Sometimes she thinks Brandon is watching her from Heaven and he is laughing at her. _How stupid you must think I am, Brandon._

Again, she shakes his brothers' hands. This time she meets Eddard's eyes. It's the least she can do, for Brandon's sake.

"I'm Catelyn Tully. I was friends with your brother."

"I've heard of you," he says softly. There's a pause and they both look at the three graves—the one for Rickard Stark, the one for his wife, and finally, Brandon's."She never came, not even once," Eddard says absently. "Not even today."

Catelyn knows all too well who _she_ is. She learned all about her from Brandon. She is the cause of his death as much as Catelyn is, but since she is not here, there is no one else to share the blame.

"It was my fault, you know," she says suddenly. She's never told this to anyone, but the words have been caught in her throat, aching to come out all this time. "I was the one who told him where she was. It was my fault that he died."

Eddard only stares at her for a moment before he looks away again. His eyes are so dark and his face so grim it's as if he was born to grieve.

"I was there that day," he says. "Believe me, you are not the one to blame."

Then, to her surprise, he holds her hand. His fingers are rough against her skin, but she squeezes them as hard as she can.

"Did you ever find her?"

"Never."


	3. Track 03 - Two Lions by Hear Me Roar!

**A Game of Mixtapes**

by Emmy Smokes

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**Track 03 – **_**Two Lions**_ by** Hear me Roar****!**

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They began by listening to their mother's old albums, the ones their father kept hidden in an old room nobody ever went to. That room—the only one in the house they could not reach—had always held a special fascination to them. They didn't know what was in there, and wondering about its contents was one of their favorite games.

Finding the key was not hard. All it took was the two of them—she with her wits, and he with his brawl. It was Cersei that learned of its whereabouts from a maid, and it was Jaime who went and got it for her.

After that, there was not much that could stop them.

They spent many hours in that room. Some of those hours—when their father wasn't home to hear—were spent listening to their mother's voice again, singing to them from the underworld.

And to the beat of their father's drums, she sang of love.

It was to her that they owed their love of music, and it was to her that they owed their lives, and it was to her that they owed their love. And it was for her that they would keep her legacy alive.

Yes, they would be what their father wanted them to be: they'd go to school and get their degrees and marry the sort of people he would approve of—but they would also do what their mother liked best: they would make music, and they'd do it together, the way their parents used to.

Their father found out about the music eventually, but he never learned of the other thing.

"She was so beautiful," one of them says.

They're looking at the magazine scraps their father keeps in an anonymous golden album. The clippings are mostly of their mother: Joanna Lannister wearing nothing but Westeros' flag of red and black for The Citadel magazine; Joanna Lannister draped in a lion's fur, her wild amber hair floating around her like a mane; Joanna Lannister and her beloved electric guitar, an instrument she'd ask to be buried with and which Cersei later finds in her father's room; Joanna Lannister and her bassist and most beloved friend (whose head somebody has cut off); Joanna Lannister with her manager and cousin, Tywin Lannister.

"And she looks so free," the other adds.

"Until she met Dad, you mean."

"I think they were happy, though."

"As happy as you and I?"

They kiss.

"Impossible."

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Author's Note: Yup, Cersei and Jaime + incest + general creepiness. I wrote this a while ago but I was hesitant to post it bc it's so short. Anyway, comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome!


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